Corruption is an illness prevalent across the world, a phenomenon affecting the smooth functioning of the age-old social-political structures in place. World Anti-Corruption Day is a global initiative, designated by the UNas December 9th, to curb the impact of corruption.
To combat the spread of corruption, on October 31, 2003, the United Nations adopted the “UN Convention against Corruption”. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was designated as the secretariat by the UN General Assembly. The day is observed to create awareness about the social and economic issues and measures to be taken against it.
The theme of this day is to minimise the constant undermining of the democratic as well as the economical integrity of the nations. Each year, campaigns for this purpose are propagated. For the year 2020, Guterres says -
Corruption is criminal, immoral and the ultimate betrayal of public trust. It is even more damaging in times of crisis — as the world is experiencing now with the COVID-19 pandemic. The response to the virus is creating new opportunities to exploit weak oversight and inadequate transparency, diverting funds away from people in their hour of greatest need.
-UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, Statement on corruption in the context of COVID-19
This year’s campaign is Recover with Integrity. It was conceptualized keeping in mind how corruption continues to thrive even during the global pandemic. The nations continue taking necessary and significant measures to procure the funding to battle against COVID-19 pandemic, secure medical equipment as well as provide an economic safety net for the fast collapsing economy. The urgent actions, however, have had an impact on the compliance and oversight measures and a number of significant opportunities have been created for corruption. Truly chilling and damaging corruption scenarios as witnessed during the pandemic can be found on www.anticorruptionday.org, the official site.
The campaign highlights the fact that by taking effective anti-corruption measures and better transparency will lead to a better COVID-19 recovery. To be a part of the campaign ourselves, we can use to publicly accessible social media kit — logos, posters and the hashtags from the above-listed site. As UN states,
To RECOVER with INTEGRITY, we need to stand #UnitedAgainstCorruption.
-Arka Gohil(CC Member, Ayuda NGO)
